The summer is about to turn to fall in Seattle and the market is in full swing. Ryan was quite overwhelmed. The beauty of farmers' markets is the freedom they seem to bring from "profitable crops". When I asked why Ryan was so silent while I was brimming with excitement, he said, "I don't even know what half this stuff is!" Ryan, with his business background, explained why the grocery stores didn't carry 8 varieties of tomato, 6 varieties of potato, or what looked like hundreds of pepper varieties. It made the grocery store seem pretty boring.
To be fair, an excellent grocery store (by grocery store standards) is one block closer to us than the farmers' market. But it's just not the same. After picking up some rainbow chard, red-green tomatoes, apricots and a bag of mixed potatoes we headed home to cook some lunch. It took a fair amount of coaxing to get Ryan to try the tomatoes. They looked ugly, with weird red green patterns, some healed splits on the top and their irregular shape. It only took a bite. He was hooked. They were so sweet they tasted like candy but so much better for us!
Then we had to figure out what to do with the chard. We picked up a huge bunch of rainbow chard with white, yellow and red stalks. We decided to sauté with just a simple dash of salt and pepper. The red stalks were sweet and the yellow stalks were salty. It was a great mix together, plus look at all the nutrition in chard!
Simple was the theme for lunch. The potatoes were boiled and salted. The tomatoes were sliced and topped with chopped carrot and cucumber and dressed with basil olive oil. We were full and felt healthy all the way around. With a little coffee we were ready for the rest of the day. Ryan remarked as I carried the plates into the kitchen, "How nice it was to talk to the farmers." And I agree.
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